Chapter 13 #2
In June, when she’d packed a bag and shown up at Richard’s house in Kent, she never really intended to spend the night alone in a Dover hotel. But over the months of separation … Cold feet? She looked down at her slippers and smiled. They feel warmer now.
Julia parted the starched white curtains. A full moon lit the circular sweep of Finsbury Circus, the bare trees black silhouettes against the paler sky. She sat, leaning on her elbow. Is Kate right about the sparkle in my eye?
Julia threw off the covers each morning, happier than she’d been for months, eager for the day.
But her nights … most nights felt longer and lonelier.
Her grandfather nodded off most evenings, retiring early, leaving empty hours until bedtime.
She’d look up from a book, listening, hoping for a late knock, disappointed when the ticking clock and the whoosh of falling fireplace ash were the only sounds.
Julia roused herself when a bank of thin clouds drifted, veiling the moon.
She removed the warmer from between the sheets, tipped the hot embers from the pan, and leaned the long handle against the fireplace.
Julia turned back the blanket and looked down at the bed.
She hovered her hand, feeling the rising heat against her palm.
A smile played on her lips. She wondered, What would it be like?
To share a bed with someone who warmed the sheets.
On Monday morning, Tennant’s day at the Yard began with a report from Liverpool: confirmation that McGrath had taken a steamer from Cork, landed, and moved on to London. But there, the trail ended. He smiled when the knock that interrupted him was Julia’s.
“Just the person I wanted to see,” Tennant said, rounding his desk and pulling out a chair.
“That’s always pleasant to hear.” She sat, peeling off her gloves.
“I’m eager for your summary about our corpses.”
“Hmm … not so delightful.” Julia handed him her report. “There’s no doubt a single killer is at work. Any rational person—”
“Rational. That’s the rub. Well, the colonel will believe what he will, but this will convince the commissioner.”
Tennant brought her up to date on the recent developments.
“So, you have servants stealing from the queen,” Julia said, “using royal service to cover up a smuggling enterprise. Is it your theory that Lizzie stumbled on the scheme?”
“It seems reasonable …”
“But?”
“Brigid Dowling’s murder doesn’t fit. Our gentlemen suspects, not the servants, knew about her travels. And they had the leisure and means to move around, not Bolger, the Osborne House steward.”
“There’s what’s his name,” Julia said. “The valet to the Prince of Wales in London.”
“Stanley Hackett’s a low-level crook and a scared rabbit,” Tennant said. “No, first things first, Julia. How often I’ve gotten it wrong by losing track of that simple principle.”
“Meaning?”
“It starts with the murder of Lizzy Dowling. For some reason, she had to die. Why?”
“I have something for you on that score. It’s the second reason I’m here.” Julia extracted a sheet of paper from her medical bag. “Faithfully transcribed by Lady Styles from Princess Alice’s letter, sparing you pages of royal family news.”
“About time,” Tennant said, scanning the paper. “Well, it clears up part of a mystery—how Lizzie got to Osborne House. Still, an intriguing question mark remains about Lady Middlebury’s interest in the girl.”
“And Princess Alice names a location for you. A village near Kilcullen.”
“Kilcullen?” O’Malley said, entering the room. “’Tis wild country thereabouts.”
The inspector rummaged in his drawer, found a map of Ireland, and unfolded it across his desk. O’Malley pointed to a spot.
“Hmm … only a scattering of villages,” Tennant said. “Most of the area seems taken up by the great plain of the Curragh and the British army base.”
O’Malley said, “More soldiers and sheep than locals.”
Julia looked at the sergeant. “What do they think about a British military base in their midst?”
O’Malley smoothed his mustache, considering. “’Tis a bit of a mix. Not much love lost, but plenty of Irishmen ‘take the queen’s shilling’ and serve in the army.”
Tennant folded the map back to the rectangle that showed Kilcullen. “Make a list of the villages, Paddy. Then we’ll send a message to the Kilcullen constabulary. Someone must know the Dowling family.”
O’Malley grinned. “Sure, it will give those sleepy coppers something to do.”
Julia said, “Perhaps if you ask around London’s Irish neighborhoods for people from Kildare. Kate said emigrants tend to cluster.”
Tennant said, “We’re looking for someone else from Kildare.” He explained the hunt for McGrath, the sniper.
“Paddy, can we identify some likely neighborhoods?”
“There was a flood of famine emigration from Kildare and other Leinster counties, so it’ll be hard to find just one or two.”
Tennant picked up a box of red-tipped pins and turned to his wall map of London. The inspector stuck markers as O’Malley rattled off place names, and Julia added some Irish neighborhoods in Whitechapel.
Tennant stood back from the map. “We’ll start by alerting these divisional inspectors to look out for an Irishman in ‘square-toed boots.’”
Two days later, they received a report of a sighting, so Tennant, O’Malley, and a pair of constables headed to a Whitechapel pub.
The Blue Anchor’s barman dragged a mop cloth from his shoulder and wiped a few circles around the smooth oak surface. He’d had crossed anchors inked into the webbing of his left hand, and his fingers were stamped “H-O-L-D” and “F-A-S-T,” one letter per knuckle.
Tennant held up his warrant card.
The barman peered at it and said, “The copper on this beat said to keep an eye out, so I reported a bloke wearing square-toed boots. He’s a new face around here and looked and sounded like a typical Mick.”
“And where will we be finding this typical Mick?” O’Malley asked in his broadest brogue.
“Sorry, mate. Meant no offense. Said he was lodging at Cohen’s rooming house. Down the street, over the butcher shop.”
A five-minute walk brought them there. The shop bell’s tinkle summoned the butcher from the back, wiping his hands on a bloody rag. He said he’d seen the “upstairs Irishman” mounting the stairs thirty minutes earlier.
Tennant asked, “Any other exit besides the side staircase?”
“Not unless you take a flying leap out the back window,” the butcher said.
O’Malley asked, “Will the lock be giving us trouble if we force the door?”
“No worries, Sarge.” The butcher tapped the side of his nose. “I got a key from old Cohen. Likes me to keep an eye on things.”
Tennant assigned the two constables to watch the back window. “All right, Paddy. Let’s move.”
Tennant unlocked the door and pushed it open with a bang. The crash sent a man leaping from a wooden chair, knocking it backward. He had taken off his boots and jacket and had been reading a newspaper. O’Malley grabbed him under an armpit.
“What the fecking hell?” he said, struggling to free himself from the sergeant’s grip.
“Name?” Tennant said.
“Who wants to know?”
“Scotland Yard.” The inspector held up his warrant card. “Answer my question. Your name?”
The man stopped squirming. He blinked nervously and said, “Willie Hood. William Hood. Why are you here? I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“He’s not from Kildare,” O’Malley said. “The fella’s an Ulsterman. And he looks ten years too young.”
“Have you ever been to America?” Tennant asked.
“That I haven’t.”
Tennant picked up his square-toed boots. “Where did you get these?”
Willie Hood pulled his arm out of the constable’s grip and cocked his thumb. “A stall on Rosemary Lane. An old woman sold them to me at the rag fair.”
Tennant tossed the boots at his feet. “Put them on and take us to her.”
It was getting late, but traders in secondhand goods, mostly women, still lined one side of Rosemary Lane, hawking patched shirts, threadbare coats, and battered bowlers.
They found the old boot seller packing her boxes for the night, a wizened woman in a tattered gray shawl with a face as creased as a walnut shell.
When she confirmed Willie Hood’s story, the inspector let him go. Then he asked her about the boots.
“Bloke gave ’em to me last week—a long drink of water, he was.”
“English or Irish?” Tennant asked.
“English, but not an East Ender. He gave them boots to me, not asking a penny.”
“Did he say why?”
She shrugged. “Said his Irish friend didn’t need them, and if anyone came calling …
” She screwed up her face. “He said to tell them it’ll be harder to find him than tracking a pair of old boots.
Pitched me a shilling to repeat it back.
Then he pulled his ginger beard. Phony, but you’d never guess. Snapped it, like, and winked.”
“Mother of God,” O’Malley muttered. “He’s playing games with us now.”
Tennant sent O’Malley home and took a cab from Rosemary Lane, returning to the Yard under a snow-gray sky.
When he arrived, the first fat flakes had changed to rain.
He passed through the deserted lobby, the duty sergeant alerting him to a pair of reports left on his desk.
The inspector took the stairs as fast as his leg allowed.
It had been a long day, and his thigh ached.
He slung his overcoat and hat on the rack, added some coals to the grate, and lit the oil lamp on his desk.
Then he snatched up the report from Superintendent Eager of Windsor Borough Police.
Tennant eased into his chair and read it.